Peter Kammerer

Shades Off | For those dreaming of international travel, Hong Kong now has little to offer

Those drawn to Hong Kong by the lure of easy travel now find themselves at a crossroads. When government policy is guided neither by scientific nor economic sense, it is impossible to know when pre-Covid mobility will return. Is it time to seek more travel-friendly places?

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Travellers heading to quarantine in the arrival hall at Hong Kong International Airport on April 1. About 10,000 passenger flights arrived and left in the first three months of the year, an average of 111 a day. Photo: Bloomberg

Peter Kammerer

Published: 6:45am, 19 Apr 2022

Hong Kong is surely one of the best-positioned places on Earth for someone with travel lust to live. In less than a day, almost any part of the world can be reached by air, often without requiring a stopover. For someone on the verge of retiring and with plans to spent weeks and months getting to know cities of dreams in depth, it is an ideal base.

Yet here I am, wondering if I should stay or go, trying to work out if restrictions the government claims are about keeping the Covid-19 pandemic out are here to stay or will be tossed aside when a great enlightenment strikes.

How many people in Hong Kong have had the disease isn’t known. Officially, it’s nearly 1.2 million, but with rapid antigen testing now an accepted way to determine, authorities aren’t privy to what’s really happening. We all know of people who self-tested positive and out of worry for the consequences, kept it to themselves, their family and friends, and stayed at home until negative.

Some estimates by health experts put the figure in the city of 7.5 million people at upwards of 4 million. With so many having been infected or exposed and the vaccination rate for at least one jab at 92.7 per cent, there are few places as bulwarked and well-versed about the coronavirus and its ways. But despite so much exposure and knowledge, the government persists with a narrative that the world outside poses a serious disease threat and has to be treated suspiciously.

People wear face coverings on the MTR on March 10. Hong Kong is now in its third year of the pandemic. Photo: AFP

It can’t be denied that Covid-19 is constantly mutating and one of the variants could become even deadlier than Delta or of greater transmissibility than Omicron. But to think in these terms when people’s lives and livelihoods and in my selfish case, future, are involved is akin to refusing to get into a vehicle for fear of having an accident.